Quick Three: Liberty 88 Sky 75
Chicago drops its second straight game and, in the process, all but bows out of the Commissioner's Cup race.
The Liberty avenged their loss three weeks ago in Brooklyn by dealing the Sky a loss on their home floor on Tuesday night at Wintrust Arena. A dominant first-quarter by the visitors was cancelled out by the Sky’s excellent second, but a slow second-half at the offensive end (where Chicago shot just 23.5%) eventually gave the Liberty a window to pull away and claim victory. Teresa Weatherspoon and her team will have little time to recover as they return to action on Thursday night against Washington, but let’s take a look at tonight’s big takeaways before shifting focus to the Mystics.
1. The Chicago Sky do not employ Breanna Stewart.
I’ll get into the more nuanced analysis in a second, but this is the most realistic place to start. Stewart scored 33 points on 14/25 FG which, on its own, speaks to the impact she had, but the timeliness of her scoring was also key. She scored 15 points in a first quarter that the Liberty dominated before adding 6 more during a stretch of 7 minutes across the third and fourth where New York blew a tie game open with a 19-7 run. To add one more layer of context to her night, the shots she did make were often of a high degree of difficulty. It looked pretty obvious that some frustration seeped in for Chicago in the fourth quarter, and there’s no doubt that playing high-level defense (which the Sky did do for a few stretches tonight) and still seeing shots go in contributes to that.
At the same time, Stewart helped to neutralize a few of the strengths that the Sky usually can call on—with a game-high rebounding total and a key role in the Liberty’s tight interior defense in the second half. On the glass, the Liberty and Sky both finished with 42 rebounds including 14 from Stewart, but her impact on the offensive glass, where she grabbed 4, was the most important part of that. Those four second chance opportunities turned into 6 Liberty points (all scored by Stewart). Her defensive work, while an afterthought on this particular evening, was also important in holding the Sky to just 6-23 FG inside the paint after half-time. Chicago managed to claw their way to 38 paint points, just 1 below their season average, but the vast majority of that damage was done in the second quarter with Stewart and Jonquel Jones (who finished as a +23 despite more foul trouble tonight) offering a highly-coordinated blockade late.
2. Offensive Predictability Leads to Tough Fourth
When an offense becomes predictable, it can become very tough for a team to slog through possessions, minutes or even quarters at a time. In the final frame of tonight’s game, it felt as if the Sky truly hit that wall for the first time in 2024. The numbers tell a big story (Chicago shot 2-16 in the 4th), but the drop in energy that came along with the frustration I mentioned above does too. When the Sky are at their best, they’re a high-energy defensive team that refuses to be beaten to loose balls, dominates the transition game and can completely disrupt the opponent’s offensive flow for long stretches. Unfortunately, teams that play with that style typically run into a buzzsaw like tonight’s fourth quarter when little is going their way offensively.
Reason being, no amount of hustle can force the ball into the basket. All of the energy and enthusiasm that a team like Weatherspoon’s Sky gets from their defense and pushes into their offensive game has a nasty habit of permeating in a backwards direction when the offense unravels. Over the course of a game or a season, there’s typically time to reverse that energy and still win, but the chance to make such a reversal tonight was limited given the timing of the Liberty’s surge. Putting all that talk of momentum and emotion to one side, it’s important to think about what caused the Sky to sink into such an offensive funk. And there’s a couple of pieces to it:
Missed shots. The Sky made a handful of mistakes in the first quarter, but the looks they created were generally good. Yet, they trailed 31-15 because they struggled to hit those makable shots. In the second quarter, they flipped that and went on a run. In the third and fourth, there was a mix but some good looks that didn’t fall were certainly a factor.
New York’s defense. I mentioned it above in talking about Stewart, but the coordinated effort the Liberty showed in the second half was reflective of their veteran group. The zone they employed was key to limiting attacks on the paint—which were so key in the Sky’s win at Barclays.
Personnel. For all this team’s strengths, the Sky don’t have an MVP level player like Stewart who can carry the team through mediocre or even flat out bad offensive stretches with their individual brilliance. Chicago’s roster is also slanted towards inside scoring—something opponents can key in on.
Some of this is correctable for the Sky; some is not. One thing I’d like to see is more of the actions that the Sky have had repeated success with. Touches for Marina Mabrey in the post, Mabrey pick-and-rolls with Elizabeth Williams and Angel Reese face-up drives are all things they’ve done well in spurts but could provide more value. Even then, those 3 actions won’t sustain an offense for the entirety of a forty-minute game. At present, this team has limitations which are to be expected for a young, growing team. Playing one of the league’s best teams close for three and getting blown out in the fourth isn’t an “achievement” but it’s a worthwhile block in the foundation of what Weatherspoon is building. Given the impressive wins the Sky had early, expectations for this team have, at times, lost some grounding in reality. Remember, many more quarters like tonight’s fourth are likely to follow this season, and the Sky’s young core should be given the grace to play through those mistakes and learn. After all, it’s only game 8.
3. Should the Sky be taking more threes?
This is a genuine question. From a purely statistical level, the answer has to be yes. The Sky entered tonight’s game shooting the second-fewest threes per game in the W and shot just 7 tonight. At the same time, Chicago is only tenth in three-point percentage at 31.5%—with Mabrey responsible for 48% of the team’s volume and 59% of the their makes (including both tonight). Thus, it’s valid to consider whether shooting more threes—at the expense of being pretty inefficient—is a worthy objective. If we take a long run view, the obvious solution is personnel changes. While winning in year one was always an objective for the Sky’s new front office, establishing the core of the team this summer before adding some shooters in the winter would provide a very nice runway to quickly push up the standings in ‘25. There’s a lot of “ifs” involved, but the blueprint for improving the roster is already glaringly obvious 20% of the way through the season.
As for the here and now, I don’t think there’s a perfect answer for the Sky. That said, more volume for Mabrey is probably a good starting point. Understanding that she shot 4/12 from the floor tonight, I can get why she didn’t let it fly more freely, but she was still 2/5 from three-point land. She’s at 39% on 7.4 attempts per game this season and, with the team’s current personnel, I’d lean towards having her take as many as 10 a game if there’s no drastic drop off in efficiency. Unfortunately, as long as the rest of the team is not taking them, it’s virtually impossible to get her 10 decent looks. Indeed, she had 4 attempts after three quarters tonight and, in the normal flow of the game, getting to 7 in the final 10 minutes would not be out of the question. But with the Liberty sending doubles at her most times she caught the ball in a solid position in the fourth, it’s not practical to have her launching threes.
To help relieve some pressure, others simply have to shoot the ball. Which returns us to the conversation on efficiency. Dana Evans, whose efficiency is always a talking point for many fans, shot just one tonight, but is at 33% for the season. Given the other players who got minutes tonight are 2/22 on the season, the Sky probably need Evans to take at least the 3.8 attempts per game she’s shot so far—just to add some degree of spacing to the floor. Of course, I’ll also call back to my game preview—where I mentioned the 4/10 start from three for Michaela Onyenwere this season. At some point, she needs to play long enough to prove that she can’t continue at that clip before continuing to be DNP’d. Lastly, as long as the team continues to search for floor spacers, keep Brynna Maxwell’s name in mind as the Sky’s second round draft pick is, presumably, back at full health.